Tag Archives: atmosphere

Obama’s latest climate move: Cracking down on methane from fracking

by NicoleIrons Posted on May 12, 2016

Obama’s latest climate move: Cracking down on methane from fracking

By on May 12, 2016 12:57 pmShare

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday released the final version of new federal rules intended to curb emissions of a powerful greenhouse gas. Methane, which is the main component of natural gas, had previously been unregulated. There’s a mounting pile of evidence suggesting that as the United States relies increasingly on gas to produce electricity, methane emissions are much higher than most people expected them to be.

That’s a problem for the fight against climate change. Methane emissions are far lower than carbon dioxide emissions, and methane survives in the atmosphere for a relatively short period of time. But methane is far more effective at trapping heat than CO2 is, which makes it a significant near-term warming threat. As I reported in a deep dive on methane yesterday:

When unburned methane leaks into the atmosphere, it can help cause dramatic warming in a relatively short period of time. Methane emissions have long been a missing piece in the country’s patchwork climate policy …

The natural gas system produces methane emissions at nearly every step of the process, from the well itself to the pipe that carries gas into your home. Around two-thirds of those emissions are “intentional,” meaning they occur during normal use of equipment. For example, some pneumatic gauges use the pressure of natural gas to flip on or off and emit tiny puffs of methane when they do so. The other one-third comes from so-called “fugitive” emissions, aka leaks, that happen when a piece of equipment cracks or otherwise fails.

The lack of regulations on methane was one reason why President Barack Obama’s climate strategy, which hinges on swapping the country’s coal consumption for natural gas, has been frowned upon by some environmentalists. Even today’s regulations are just partial solution, since they only apply to new and modified natural gas infrastructure, not systems that already exist. And by some analysts’ reckoning, more than 70 percent of gas-sector methane emissions from now until 2025 will come from sources that already exist.

Still, the regulation announced today achieves one of the final remaining big items on Obama’s climate checklist. It aims to reduce gas-sector methane emissions 40-45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025 by tightening the allowed emissions from pumps, compressors, wells, and other infrastructure; requiring more frequent surveys for leaks; and implementing a data-gathering survey that will give officials and companies a better understanding of just how much methane leakage there really is. The EPA expects the regulations to cost $530 million by 2025, but produce $690 million in environmental benefits.

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Obama’s latest climate move: Cracking down on methane from fracking

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Senate passes energy modernization bill that would have been modern in 1980

by SOYTerri5434 Posted on April 20, 2016

Senate passes energy modernization bill that would have been modern in 1980

By on Apr 20, 2016commentsShare

The Senate passed the Energy Policy Modernization Act on Wednesday, the first comprehensive energy bill in nearly a decade. The bill will fund an increase in renewable energy as well as boost funding for natural gas, geothermal energy, and hydropower. The bill also reauthorizes a half-billion dollars to protect public lands and parks, updates building codes to increase efficiency and safety standards, and addresses the threat of potential cyberattacks on the electrical grid, reports The New York Times.

While the bill was hailed as a bipartisan victory by authors Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, 350.org likened it to the “V.H.S. of climate policy” — in other words, dated. It overlooks some obvious issues: Namely, it doesn’t come even close to addressing climate change.  The final compromise also leaves out a provision from an earlier version that would have provided hundreds of millions of dollars to fix Flint’s water pipes after lead contamination. Republicans vowed to block the bill if funding wasn’t removed.

Environmentalists also object to measures that will speed the export of domestically produced natural gas, the expansion of methane hydrate research and development, the delay on updating furnace efficiency standards, and the expansion of funding for nuclear research.

What some senators are thinking about doing to address climate change, however, is directing funds to the Department of Energy to a study a form of geoengineering, reports the journal Science. Known as albedo modification, the potential climate solution involves dispersing tiny particles into the atmosphere that would reflect sunlight away from the planet, and, if it’s successful, cool it. But that’s a big if. The effects of such a scheme are unknown, and there are plenty of critics who worry that geoengineering research diverts much-needed funds and focus away from technology that we know will reduce carbon emissions, like wind and solar. The measure has gone through the appropriations committee but has yet to be taken up by the Senate.

As for the Senate energy bill, negotiators must now work with the House, which has passed a similar version of the bill that also increases production of oil, coal and natural gas, before it goes to the president.

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Scientists Hooked Up an Inflatable Bag to a Cow Stomach. The Timelapse Video Is Insane.

by JenniHarlow Posted on December 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Cows are gassy beasts. And this gas is bad for the planet. Last year, my colleague Josh Harkinson detailed just how dangerous this gas has become in our atmosphere:

Cows are already the nation’s single largest source of methane, a greenhouse gas produced by oil extraction, decomposing trash, and the guts of grazing animals that’s as much as 105 times more potent than carbon dioxide. A single cow farts and belches enough methane to match the carbon equivalent of the average car. According to a 2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report, the world’s 1.4 billion cows produce 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases—more than the entire transportation sector.

Our hunger for beef is a big problem for the climate: More cows, more methane, faster warming. Now we have a sensational new visual way to understand exactly how much methane we’re talking about, thanks to a new documentary called Racing Extinction, which airs on Discovery Channel Wednesday night in 220 countries and territories around the world—a date designed to coincide with the early days of the high-stakes UN climate summit, where diplomats are attempting to forge a new global deal to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

To measure just how much a single cow emits every day, scientists at the National Institute of Agricultural Technology hooked up inflatable plastic bags to cows’ stomachs. Then they fed them. And then, they watched the methane bags inflate. Check out the time-lapse:

Look, they even have special belch-backpacks:

Watch the entire fascinating segment below, courtesy of Discovery. And check out the documentary Wednesday night, at 9 pm ET:

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Scientists Hooked Up an Inflatable Bag to a Cow Stomach. The Timelapse Video Is Insane.

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We Can Stop Pretending Any of the 2016 Republicans Believe in Science

by UlrikeSteffen Posted on November 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in The New Republic, and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Rand Paul was having a decent night in the fourth Republican debate Tuesday, until he fielded a question about climate change. With his answer, he disappointed those who thought he might deliver reality-based comments.

Paul, like the rest of the GOP candidates, wants to repeal President Barack Obama’s legacy-making Clean Power Plan reining in carbon emissions from the power sector. On Tuesday, Paul firmly aligned himself with the science-denier camp. “While I do think man may have a role in our climate, I think nature also has a role,” Paul said. “The planet is 4.5 billion years old. We’ve been through geologic age after geologic age. We’ve had times when the temperature’s been warmer. We’ve had times when the temperature’s been colder. We’ve had times when carbon in the atmosphere has been higher. So I think we need to look before we leap.”

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We Can Stop Pretending Any of the 2016 Republicans Believe in Science

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Here’s What You Need to Know About President Obama’s Decision to Reject the Keystone XL Pipeline

by Myrna Posted on November 6, 2015

Watch Climate Desk’s explainer video. In the year’s biggest victory for environmentalists, President Barack Obama announced Friday that he will reject an application from Canadian company TransCanada to construct the Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline, which would allow crude oil from Canada’s oil sands to reach ports and refineries in the US, has been a major controversy for Obama ever since he took office. The White House spent years deliberating on the issue. During that time, environmental groups accused Obama of not backing up his rhetoric on climate change with real action, and Republicans in Congress accused him of blocking a job-creating infrastructure project. In his announcement today, the president said the State Department’s analysis had shown the pipeline would not significantly benefit the US economy. “The State Department has decided that the Keystone XL pipeline would not serve the national interests of the United States. I agree with that decision,” Obama said. The timing of the announcement is significant, as it comes just weeks before the beginning of major international climate negotiations in Paris. Obama’s decision will “reverberate” with other countries and sends a strong message that the United States is serious about taking action to stop climate change, said Jennifer Morgan, director of the global climate program at the World Resources Institute. Obama said that pipeline had been given an “overinflated role in the political discourse” by both its supporters and detractors. Still, he framed his decision as a key element of his climate legacy. “America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change,” he said. “Today we continue to lead by example.” Watch the full speech below: Master image: The White House/Facebook Read original article:  Here’s What You Need to Know About President Obama’s Decision to Reject the Keystone XL Pipeline ; ; ;

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Here’s What You Need to Know About President Obama’s Decision to Reject the Keystone XL Pipeline

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Are We About to Say Goodbye to Fish Sticks?

by ElbaAudetqiabp Posted on October 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Many people think of climate change as something happening in the atmosphere, but in fact a lot of the most important changes are taking place under the ocean.

In fact, up to one-third of the greenhouse gases humans release, and up to 90 percent of the global warming caused by those gases, ends up sunk in the sea. That has a lot of scary impacts: Rising sea level threatens coastal communities; rising seawater acidity kills off coral and shellfish; changing conditions are forcing dozens of species from whales to puffins into unfamiliar regions of the globe. We’ve even got cannibal lobsters, for crying out loud.

Those impacts can also devastate vital US industries, as a peer-reviewed study published today in Nature illustrates. The research found that warming waters are to blame for a recent collapse of the cod fishery in New England. Although a smaller industry than major commercial fish like salmon and mackerel, cod, commonly used for fish sticks and other processed foods, is a multimillion dollar business in New England.

But the fish have become increasingly rare. Last year, federal regulators slapped tight limits on cod fishing after they discovered that the population was at only 4 percent of the level needed to be sustainable. That was the lowest point in a nosedive that has played out over the last decade. In 2014, the commercial catch of cod in New England—about 5 million pounds—was 67 percent less than it was in 2004; the net value of the fishery was correspondingly cut by more than half, to about $9.3 million.

Researchers at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute wanted to know whether climate change played in role in that collapse. Indeed, they found that sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Maine have risen 99 percent faster than those in the rest of the ocean, rising especially quickly over the same decade-long decline of the cod fishery. The correlation is clear when you look at the two trend lines side-by-side, as in this chart from the study:

Pershing, et al

Higher temperatures make it harder for the fish to metabolize food, leaving them with less energy, especially at their prime reproductive age of about four years. That leads to fewer fish being born. Those that are born may have a harder time finding food, as the plankton they survive on move into deeper water in search of cooler temperatures. Deep water is home to more cod predators.

These problems have all been compounded by a lack of climate-savvy policy by fishing officials, the study found. Because the officials have largely overlooked the impact of ocean warming, they’ve consistently set quotas for commercial fishers far too high, giving the cod population no opportunity to rebound even in cooler years. In other words, overfishing has been rampant even when the overall catch comes in below the legally prescribed limit.

For that reason, the key solution that the researchers advocate is better integration of climate modeling in decision about where, when, and how cod fishing should be allowed. In Canada, extreme limitations on cod fishing seen to have been remarkably successful in revitalizing the population. Still, those management choices aren’t getting any easier to make, as warming continues to rise; the only true fix for New England’s fishing industry is to slow the warming. Bear that in mind the next time you hear a politician complain about job-killing climate action policies.

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Are We About to Say Goodbye to Fish Sticks?

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New Photos: See Pluto’s Surface in Incredibly Rich Detail

by ElmoMaudsley Posted on September 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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We love Pluto. We love that we know so much more about it now—after the spacecraft New Horizons hurtled 3 billion miles to get there and send back the amazing Pluto pictures that arrived in July. Today, NASA released a new set of images that bring us right up close to the planet’s weird, chaotic surface in unprecedented detail.

Here’s NASA’s take:

“This is what we came for—these images, spectra and other data types that are going to help us understand the origin and the evolution of the Pluto system for the first time,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. “And what’s coming is not just the remaining 95 percent of the data that’s still aboard the spacecraft—it’s the best datasets, the highest-resolution images and spectra, the most important atmospheric datasets, and more. It’s a treasure trove.”

Our friend Phil Plait at Slate has some more detail about what these images tell us. But for now, just check them out for yourself. Kickass!

NASA: “This synthetic perspective view of Pluto shows what you would see if you were approximately 1,100 miles above Pluto’s equatorial area, looking northeast over the dark, cratered, informally named Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth, expanse of icy plains informally called Sputnik Planum. The entire expanse of terrain seen in this image is 1,100 miles across.” NASA

NASA: “This image features a tremendous variety of other landscapes surrounding Sputnik. The smallest visible features are 0.5 miles in size, and the mosaic covers a region roughly 1,000 miles wide.” The white squares outline close-ups in the following two images. NASA

A close-up from the image above, this is called the “chaos region” because of the diversity of surface geology. NASA

NASA: “This 220-mile wide view illustrates the incredible diversity of surface reflectivities and geological landforms on the dwarf planet. The image includes dark, ancient heavily cratered terrain; bright, smooth geologically young terrain; assembled masses of mountains; and an enigmatic field of dark, aligned ridges that resemble dunes; its origin is under debate.” NASA

NASA: “Two different versions of an image of Pluto’s haze layers, from a distance of 480,000 miles. Pluto’s north is at the top, and the sun illuminates Pluto from the upper right. The left version has had only minor processing, while the right version has been specially processed to reveal a large number of discrete haze layers in the atmosphere. In the left version, faint surface details on the narrow sunlit crescent are seen through the haze in the upper right of Pluto’s disk, and subtle parallel streaks in the haze may be crepuscular rays—shadows cast on the haze by topography such as mountain ranges on Pluto, similar to the rays sometimes seen in the sky after the sun sets behind mountains on Earth.” NASA

The moon, Charon. NASA

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New Photos: See Pluto’s Surface in Incredibly Rich Detail

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Climate change will destroy the planet’s circulatory system

by MathiasArndt Posted on September 9, 2015

Spoiler Alert

Climate change will destroy the planet’s circulatory system

By on 8 Sep 2015commentsShare

We can’t have the birds or the bees. We can’t have woolly mammoths. For the love of Gotye, even the red pandas are in danger. And if we keep releasing all these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, soon we won’t even have water that flows in the right direction: A pair of new studies suggests that warming temperatures and melting Arctic ice sheets could have drastic effects on global ocean currents. Welcome back to Spoiler Alerts, where climate change grayscales all the Nyan Cats.

Part of the problem with melting ice, argues the first study, is that it’s mostly freshwater. Don’t get me wrong, I love freshwater — can’t get enough of the stuff — but cold freshwater doesn’t sink the same way cold saltwater does (because it’s not as dense). And part of what helps the currents do their job is the fact that cold water tends to sink. Any disruptions in temperature and salinity are likely to toy with that system in a severely objectionable manner. The Washington Post reports:

“Previous studies have generally had to estimate the amount of melting and then insert the meltwater into the ocean simulation by hand, or haven’t included the feedback between ice sheet melting and ocean salinity at all,” lead scientist Paul Gierz said.

The team’s computer models projected a drop in ocean salinity of about 7 percent in the areas near Greenland’s melting ice sheets, a decline that would alter deep-ocean circulation patterns over time, resulting in “less heat being transported to the high latitudes … which has implications for both North American as well as European weather and climate,” Gierz said.

Because the climate systems tend to respond slowly to environmental changes, the full impacts may not be felt for decades.

But we don’t have to wait for those impacts to kick in to get a feel for them: Another study suggests that there might be a gloomy historical case study for these kinds of ocean circulation changes. By examining ice core records and cave formations like stalagmites, researchers were able to salvage proxy temperature data from upwards of 12,000 years ago. Near the end of the last ice age, the authors write, rising temperatures led to rising sea levels and an influx of freshwater — the same kind of influx that today’s changing climate is expected to produce.

And the result wasn’t pretty: Changes in ocean circulation helped lead, for example, to an 18-degree Fahrenheit drop in Greenland over a period of less than ten years. Some of these changes “lingered for centuries,” writes The Washington Post. We’re talking 1,000-year droughts in the South Pacific.

A modest proposal, then: Start bottling that melting ice water and send it south. They’re going to need it in Vanuatu when the drought strikes. That is, of course, if the island isn’t first swallowed by the sea.

Source:

New studies deepen concerns about a climate-change ‘wild card’

, The Washington Post.

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The Raging Future of American Wildfires

by Myrna Posted on August 27, 2015

The risk of major blazes could increase 600 percent by mid-century, say scientists. Tom Reichner/Shutterstock On the one hand, the warming atmosphere is predicted to drench many parts of the U.S. with extreme rain. On the other, for much of the year it’ll likely desiccate vast areas into brittle tinder, setting the stage for more frequent and powerful wildfires. Increasingly balmy temperatures and a steady lengthening of the wildfire season (peep what’s happening this year in Alaska and Canada) will light a flame under America’s fire potential. By mid-century, large hunks of the country—including the West, the Gulf Coast, and the forested Great Lakes—could see a sixfold increase in weeks with a threat of major fires, according to researchers at the University of Idaho, the U.S. Forest Service, and elsewhere. Using climate models, the scientists project a future where “very large fires” have ample opportunity to explode, according to a paper in the International Journal of Wildland Fire. This class of conflagration is responsible for charring most of the land in many parts of the nation. Aside for the above-mentioned places, the researchers say, the risk of large fires could intensify in Northern California’s Klamath Mountains and Sierra Nevada and from Florida up the East Coast. Read the rest at CityLab. See more here:  The Raging Future of American Wildfires ; ; ;

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The Raging Future of American Wildfires

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Power plant emissions hit a 27-year low — and Obama’s plan hasn’t even kicked in yet

by GeraldoMatters Posted on August 6, 2015

Power plant emissions hit a 27-year low — and Obama’s plan hasn’t even kicked in yet

By on 6 Aug 2015commentsShare

Politico’s Michael Grunwald, among others, has been arguing that Obama’s Clean Power Plan is not actually as ambitious as some analysts make it out to be. The plan, which aims to cut emissions from the electric sector, is “pretty weak,” he argues, largely because emissions are already falling markedly. Today there’s a new data point to support that argument: Greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. power plants hit a 27-year low in April 2015, the most recent month for which data were available.

The Energy Information Administration, which tracks energy sector data as part of the Federal Statistical System, reported on Wednesday that the electric sector released 128.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that month — the lowest since April 1988.

The EIA breaks down the numbers:

In any year, April is typically the month with the lowest carbon dioxide emissions from the electric power sector, mainly because of mild weather, as low heating and cooling demand are reflected in low overall electricity demand. Two fuels, coal and natural gas, account for almost all the carbon dioxide emissions from the electric power sector. In April 2015, electricity generation from both coal and natural gas fell from their March values, but because coal fell more than natural gas (18% versus 6%, respectively), generation from natural gas surpassed generation from coal in April. …

A longer historical perspective shows more significant changes in the electric power sector fuel mix. Comparing April 1988 to April 2015 (27 years), natural gas consumption in the sector more than tripled, renewable energy consumption more than doubled, nuclear energy consumption increased 47%, and coal consumption decreased 17%. Electricity generation has become less energy and carbon intensive over time. Compared to April 1998, April 2015 generation in the electric power sector was 44% higher, but the associated primary energy use and carbon dioxide emissions increased by only 33% and 4%, respectively.

See the visualization below to get a better sense of the emissions trend. (You can mouse over for monthly values.)

The EPA estimates the state-centric plan will cut emissions from the power sector by 32 percent of 2005 levels by 2030. As Grunwald and other analysts point out, power plant emissions have already fallen by about 15 percent since 2005, getting us halfway to the administration’s goal before the plan even kicks into gear.

Another notable low point from April 1988: Celine Dion pulled off a win at the Eurovision Song Contest for “Ne partez pas sans moi.”

Source:
Monthly power sector carbon dioxide emissions reach 27-year low in April

, Energy Information Administration.

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Power plant emissions hit a 27-year low — and Obama’s plan hasn’t even kicked in yet

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